Fitness guru Billy Blanks, the man at the center of the $200 million Tae Bo exercise empire, is taking measures to pump up his public image.

He’s settled a nasty lawsuit with his one-time estranged agent Seth Ersoff and has earmarked money from upcoming video sales for anti-drug programs.

“We turned a negative into a real positive,” said Ersoff, the one-time agent who less than a year ago was claiming in a breach of contract suit in Los Angeles Superior Court that Blanks and partner Paul Monea had cheated him out of millions of dollars in royalties from the successful exercise video.

The exercise program combines a form of karate and kick boxing with dancing. Ersoff claims he was one of the people who urged Blanks to do the infomercials that eventually turned the personal trainer into a nationally known fitness guru worth millions.

Along the way, Monea, the producer of the videos, was found to have had some past legal problems over health claims made about devices sold to consumers via late night TV ads. Monea’s past legal problems did not involve Blanks products — but it certainly did not help the clean-living image that Blanks sought to promote.

Ersoff said that his suit against Blanks and Monea was settled amicably, but he would not disclose terms.

Now, he says, Blanks and Monea have separately agreed to make a major donation to D.A.R.E. — the non-profit Drug Abuse Resistance Education.

Monea personally agreed to give $1 million.

“It was one of the most generous donations we’ve received in quite some time,” says Glen Levant, president and co-founder of D.A.R.E.

Blanks has also said he will kick in $1 from each new video sold — and if the purchaser agrees to contribute a dollar, Blanks will also match that.

Steve Dworman, editor of the West Los Angeles-based Infomercial Marketing Report, says that even though Blanks is no longer running TV infomercials for the first exercise video, he has probably pulled in $200 million from last year’s video.

A book has been written for Bantam Books and a second exercise video is in the works.